Lindsay Stripling

S&H editor Ben Nussbaum talked with San Francisco-based artist Linday Stripling about watercolors, dreams, and making the leap to being a full-time artist.

- Ben Nussbaum

Your work has been described as dreamy. Tell me about that.

Lindsay: My interest in painting and art started out with me being really interested in memory. My grandma had dementia and my other grandma had Alzheimer’s. I studied photography at UC Santa Cruz and got into painting by painting old photos and leaving parts out.

My approach to image-making is very different now, but the ideas kind of hold true—I’m really interested in narrative and the narratives we tell ourselves, how we move through imagery as viewers, how I move through imagery as a painter, and telling a story in a way that feels really rooted in psychology and being a human.

I use my sketchbooks and drawings as a way to create a glossary of ideas I’m interested in, whether it’s concepts or literal images, and I usually pull from that to create the paintings.

You’re mainly a watercolorist now?

I started out with watercolor and I still use watercolor pretty regularly. I work for my friend Alexis who has a shop here in San Francisco and we make watercolor from scratch. So watercolor is a huge part of my practice. But I also use gouache and I draw and I’ve started doing more digital painting, just because watercolor can take a really long time. I save watercolor for when I’m doing gallery shows.

Your friend makes watercolors from scratch?